IT group Outsourcery has soared nearly 60% after unveiling a deal with Microsoft.

The company, whose co-chief executive is Dragons’ Den star Piers Linney, said it was participating in the Microsoft cloud solution provider programme to resell and bill Office 365. Linney said:

Our inclusion in the ...programme, which has only been made available to a limited number of Microsoft partners, allows us to sell, bill, manage and support Office 365 and own the complete customer lifecycle.

Phil Sorgen, a corporate vice president at Microsoft, said:

Through participation these partners [in the programme] have demonstrated dedication to helping our mutual customers successfully move to the cloud.

Outsourcery shares have jumped 6p to 16.25p. But this is still way off their peak of 136.5p in May last year, and George O’Connor at Panmure Gordon said:

Outsourcery is one of limited number of UK partners with the ability to bill, manage and support Office 365. Well done Outsourcery. The programme is indeed invite only – and is exclusive like ferrero rocher at your aunt Miranda’s Christmas bash. The programme has two types of member: 1-Tier partners looking to provide end-to-end (Microsoft) customer experience, including customer support. 2-Tier (the sandboys) resellers working with 2-Tier distribution partners to sell Microsoft cloud services with the 2-Tier distribution partner provides reseller and customer support. Most partners will be 2-Tier reseller.

Good news somewhat diminished today as Microsoft Azure (Microsoft cloud) status page says oh dear, oh dear problems. A global problem but the European operations are taking the longest to fix. Access to Microsoft’s Office 365 online suite of apps and its Xbox Live gaming facility are among services affected. Microsoft is attempting to make gains on the market leader, Amazon Web Services, as well as IBM, Google and others.